Going Dancing
by Anachronistic Anglophile
Summary: Lily Evans needs money, and applies to James Potter for assistance. Does a little twirl around the ballroom with Severus Snape change things?


_I'm not just kidding when I say that I'm not J.K._

This is based on a little snippet that I originally added to -EHWIES' story Through a Glass Darkly, which, by the by, I happen to recommend. It didn't make the final cut, but since I really like it, here it is, all on its own, though I change the narrative tense and add a little description to the front and back of the snippet.

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .

**Going Dancing**

The reason she was at Potter's in the first place was a reason she was not proud of--she needed money, and Petunia was far from charitable--and when the prim house-elf who admitted her into the house left her in the study, she could not help but marvel at the mansion.

The house-elf had reported that his master was busy, and would be down momentarily, but twenty minutes had passed and without any indication that he intended to do so. Not that she blamed him. After such a rocky love-hate relationship over the course of their final years at Hogwarts, not the least of which was caused by her stress about working for The Order and then the death of her parents by car accident, she realized it was all she deserved for having dumped him.

A few months later, visiting his home for the first time, she wondered exactly if scrimping and saving was worth it; she knew he would give her _all _of this if she asked, so deep did he profess his love to be, but up until now she had not thought about taking advantage of his generosity. The idea that she was begging for a few thousand galleons was not something her conscience condoned, not she, who had been taught to never be beholden to anyone.

Thirty minutes passed, and Lily was aggravated. Standing, stretching, and walking out of the room, she went through door after door after door, admiring the house and wishing like a child in a candy shop. She admired every vase, every love-seat, every end-table, and wished it could be hers--not for necessarily the monetary stability they represented, but because of the symbolic indication that if they were hers, then she was married to James. And oh, how she longed for James!

Then she came upon the ballroom, quite unexpectedly, and all she could do was gape at first. The high french windows, luxurious crimson and gold curtains, marble-tiled floor, and shiny grand piano in the corner all bespoke opulence of a very intriguing kind. It was all so lovely, so beautiful, so reminiscent of another era.

And, as deeply as she had been wishing for James immediately earlier, she felt an intense longing for Severus.

After reading a few Jane Austen novels when she was nine, Lily had fallen in love with dancing, and, when she took a few year's worth of lessons before Hogwarts, it was inevitable that she pass on instruction to her best friend. He had been very bad at first, making a general arse of himself by tripping over his feet and knocking over her mum's living-room furniture in the process, but learned quickly by pure determination. Soon the pair had become an excellent partnership, and, admittedly, there was really nothing like dancing with him. Once they got older, on some summer weekends they even went to the dance hall in uptown and earned the admiration of all the old ladies and gentlemen who went there. The pair was a hit every time; even the miserly old bartender liked to give them Shirley Temples, on the house.

That was all over, now.

An intense pain wound itself in her stomach, and she felt her eyes becoming wet. She missed Severus so much. Oh, if only he could see this lovely, glassy ballroom! It had nothing like the grimy lighting, the inconvenient ridges in the grainy boards, the glinting spectacles of spectators that their old favorite haunt had. Indeed, dancing here in the arms of Severus would be as smooth as silk.

She brushed her hair behind her ears and stepped into the center of the floor, closing her eyes, pretending that he was there, imagining his virile scent, feeling his stubbly cheek against hers and the presence of his enormous nose nestled in her hair. She raised her hands, placing them gently on his narrow shoulders, forgiving him a thousand times over for his trespass of calling her 'Mudblood', if only for the moment.

She felt him step to the side, leading in time to the velvety slow waltz that she started to hum. He was very graceful, more so than any man could be in real life, but it is Lily's daydream. Keeping her head upright, she felt their fingers entwine and his hand steady on her waist, and she felt that she wanted to swoon or melt like chocolate in his wiry arms.

He started to get more daring, and twirled her in a magnanimous manner. The flurry of motion sent her internal tempo from an adagio to a rapid allegro, and she twirled on one foot. Her pirouette became a solo when his hand released hers. For a moment she maintained her balance, but then she tumbled, and she barely broke her fall and prevented her skull from cracking open on the marble floor by flinging her arm behind.

She heard his deep, disconcerting laugh ringing in her ears--not jeering, for she knew he never would be malicious towards her, but instead gently amused--and received a hand to help her up again.

They commenced once more, dancing in perfect concord. If, for some reason, the real and living Severus had entered upon the scene, he would have been swept away by her beauty and sunk on his knees in a plea of forgiveness more abject than anything else. But, as it was, she was nowhere that Severus would dare enter at will, if only because it was the home of a respected member of the Order of the Phoenix and he was quite well known to be a Death Eater. Lily was aware of this latter fact, and the tears that were in her eyes while she was dancing around, pretending to be with him, were made all the heavier for this acknowledgement.

Would she have forgiven him, she wondered, if he came in that moment, craving apology and her company? Probably faster than in any other situation, she figured. Perhaps she might even kiss him, something she had longed to do for years.

If she knew how much he would tear his hair out if he had access to her thoughts at the time, she would definitely have kissed him.

All at once, she grew tired, and stopped moving.

"Severus?" she whispered, approaching the french window and looking out into the twilight sky in a silent plea. "Do take care of yourself. I miss you, so."

Briefly hoping that, like the cry of _Jane! Jane! Jane! _in Jane Eyre, her words might echo to the Rochester in question, she turned away, for she heard footsteps.

"Lily?"

It was Potter. She steeled herself.

"Lily? Where are you?"

"In here," she called softly.

He entered the ballroom just as she said this.

"Lily!" he exclaimed, and ran to her side to embrace her. "This _is _a surprise, a very pleasant one I must say. What brings you here?" he asked gently. "Are you...oh, Lily, what's wrong?"

There were still tears in her eyes, and they doubled in number as she buried herself in his high-end robes.

"Oh James, my parents' house is being foreclosed, and my sister isn't going to help me since she's just married and she and that awful pig Vernon want to have a child, and I don't have any money of my own really since my work at the bloody Ministry isn't worth more than keeps me in house and home, and oh, I just don't want to lose that house, it means so much to me, all my memories of my childhood and everything, and I don't want to lose it, so I need money, please? I'm so sorry, if I had any credit at all I'd not have bothered you but I can't do anything at all money-wise and I'm afraid I have too many bills that I can't pay to get any kind of a real loan."

"There, there, it's not all that desperate," he whispered, rubbing her shoulder. "So, are you here to ask for money, or something else?"

"Money, Potter, that's it. Just money."

"So we're back to calling me by my surname, are we?" he asked softly. Then he sighed. "Okay, Lily. Listen to me. I'd gladly loan you the money, but there's one thing I've got to say about it. The fact is, I don't get a great deal of an allowance. We're rich, but mostly because we're fiscally responsible, you know? So basically, I can't get my hands on any capital until I get married."

This was said in a highly pointed fashion.

"So is _this _the reason you've been after me to marry you all these years?" Lily asked incredulously.

He shrugged. "Well, only the lesser part of the reason. You're beautiful, you're brilliant...I mean, my love aside, you're a fine catch."

Feeling more at ease with the idea that he wanted to marry her for financial gain rather than for _her _herself, Lily thought about the idea. To be honest, most of her early years she had been of the idea that she was eventually going to marry Severus, and therefore she had been rather creeped out by James' antics throughout their schooling, though their strange Hogwarts relationship had helped to deter the feeling.

"So, marry you, and we save my house?" she asked quietly.

"I don't want to be so blunt but...yeah, that's about it," he replied, demure.

Suddenly, she grinned. "I think I like you better as a pragmatist than as a heart-throb. I accept."

"Really?" She felt his body turn rigid with excitement. "Oh, Lily."

His lips were on hers, but she knew that her heart was not in the snog. Her mind was focused on her imaginary discarded dancing-partner, who watched them, arms folded, sternly looking on with tears in his eyes.

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .

_PLEASE do not ask for more, because I'm really not interested in writing more. Review, please!  
_


End file.
